between the hamlet and the foot of the mountains.

At the first fire, Volaski, who was resolved not to wound the father of
his beloved Valerie, discharged his pistol in the air, but instantly
fell, shot through the lungs by the Baron de la Motte!

CHAPTER XXXIII.

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE.

The Baron de la Motte, leaving Captain de Volaski stretched on the
ground, to be cared for by the seconds and the surgeon in attendance,
went back to the hotel and made preparations to leave San Vito.

Mademoiselle de la Motte, still very weak from recent illness, was placed
in a carriage at the risk of her life, and compelled to commence the
journey back to France.

Madame de la Motte, grieved with the grief and anxious for the health of
her daughter, dared not show the sufferer any pity or kindness.

Monsieur de la Motte was no longer the tender and affectionate father he
had hitherto shown himself: for, in his bitter mortification and fierce
resentment, his love seemed turned to hatred, his sympathy to antipathy.

The attenuated form, the pale face, and the sunken eyes of his once
beautiful child, failed to move his compassion for her. He told her with
brutal cruelty that he had slain her lover in the duel, and left him dead
upon the ground; and that she must think no more of the villain who had
dishonored her family.

On arriving in Paris, the baron established his household in the
magnificent Hotel de la Motte, in the most aristocratic quarter of the
city; and here began for Valerie a life that was a very purgatory on
earth.

At home, if her purgatory could be called her home, she was studiously
and habitually treated with scorn and contempt, as a creature unworthy to
bear the family name, or share the family honors; until at length the
child herself began to look upon her fault in the light her father wished
her to see it, and with such exaggerating eyes, withal, that she came to
think of herself as a dishonored criminal, unworthy even to live. Her
grief sank to horror, and her depression to despair.

She was treated as an outcast in all respects but one, and this exception
was an additional cruelty; for she was introduced into the gay world of
fashion, and compelled to mix in all its festivities, at the same time
being sternly warned that if this same world should suspect her fault,
she would not be received in any drawing-room in Paris.

Valerie was too broken-spirited to answer by telling the truth, that the